You are probably aware that the STM and ALPSP trade associations between them
represent the publishers of more than half of the world’s scholarly peer-reviewed
journals, and two-thirds of the annual global output of research articles. Many of
our members have contacted us concerning communications they have received
from you with respect to journal article author publishing agreements. We
thought it might be appropriate to outline publisher concerns about the MIT
proposals, and suggest a meeting to discuss these....
As it stands, the broad scope of the rights described in the amendment would be
unacceptable to the majority of our members; however, widespread rejection of
this document by publishers is presumably not in MIT's interests. At the proposed
meeting we hope that we would be able to agree the specific rights needs of MIT
and its authors, identify the extent to which these rights are already covered by
existing practice, and discuss how best to bridge any remaining gaps.
Many of our members have already made changes to their journal author
agreements to conform with the NIH ‘Public Access’ policy, and some have also
been working with the Wellcome Trust in relation to its policy. Publishers’ general
policies on author posting of papers are well-documented on the SHERPA web
site; a recent ALPSP survey (Scholarly Publishing Practice, 2006) showed that
over 50 percent of publishers permit some form of author self-archiving, although
embargoes are beginning to be a feature of many such policies....
Author posting (of any version of an article) immediately upon publication
risks competing with the journal itself; publishers are already seeing a decline
in downloads from their site when articles are freely available elsewhere.
Should a significant proportion of a journal’s content, through policies such as
MIT’s, become readily available free of charge, librarians would have a strong
incentive to cancel subscriptions and licenses. Some librarians may see this
as a desirable outcome , but it could lead to the demise of journals upon which
scholarship and tenure depend.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/27/2006 09:43:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
